Do they still make small powdered Gatorade packets, enough for a quart or so of water? I'm thinking they'd be good for purified water that may have some residual taste from the purifying agent. I buy large cans of it, but I was looking for something more portable and small, without having to measure and make my own.

_________________________
It's not that life is so short, it's that you're dead for so long.

It isn't Gatorade, but Crystal Light makes these little packets (about 12 to a box, I think) that will "flavor up" a .5 liter (16.9 oz) bottle of water. They come in lemonade and Raspberry flavors. I took the raspberry to GenCon (a gaming convention) and it was actually pretty good.

_________________________
The OGRE**************If we aren't supposed to eat animals,why are they made out of meat???

I recall watching a show about heat exaustion which suggested your hydration drink should have glucose as well as electrolyte replacement... Anyone know more about this?

I'm assuming that it's the glucose part that you're asking about, and not the electrolyte replacement issue. It's been quite a while since I studied biochem and physiology, but here goes...

First, you might think that the water you drink is somehow absorbed directly by your body, like sucking it up through millions of tiny straws, but that's actually false. Actually, your body does it indirectly. Water is passively drawn out of the interior of your small intestine and into the tissue by making the tissue of the small intestines "saltier". Then it is absorbed into the capillaries and into the bloodstream. Lining your small intestines are millions of tiny pumps that pump sodium molecules into the tissues thus making them "saltier". The thing is, the pump requires a molecule of glucose to tag along at the same time. No glucose, no pumping action. Similarly, no sodium, no pumping action, too.

Glucose is normally not found in food or beverages. Instead, bigger, more complicated sugar molecules are broken down by enzymes in the small intestine to produce glucose. But that takes a bit of time, so you can see the hypothetical advantage of having glucose in a rehydration solution.

You can make your own poor man's sports drink by mixing 5 tablespoons of table sugar and a third of a teaspoon of table salt (be careful if you're on a sodium-restricted diet) in a liter of water. Don't store longer than a day, even if chilled. That sugar water solution is a prime breeding ground for bacteria.

I'm not a doctor, so if you have any questions about your specific situation, please consult your healthcare provider.

No more than about one quart of Gatorade a day, or you will bloat and feel like crap.

Even bottled water here smells and tastes bad. Individual serving crystal light packets or generic brand subsitutues (Wal Mart) make the water pallatable enough to consume the proper amount of water.

Drink up to 2 gallons of water daily during peak heat/activity days. more than 2 gallons and you start to feel sick, regardless of how much sodium, potassium, glucose, fructose or any other "electolyte" you consume. Puking up water will dehydrate you very quickly (you sweat a lot more when you are nauseated).

These are standards, there are those who tolerated more or less extremes than most, but they are exceptions. I didn't pay so much attention to the color of my urine as I did to how my body felt, how my mind was functioning. If I felt like I needed more liquid, I got something to drink. If I was sweating hard, I drank more.

When I got food poisoning and ended up in the hospital here, I had to have 3 quarts of liquid pumped into my arm before my body started to normalize. I know what dehydration feels like, and I was drinking water at the time of my collapse. An IV is much quicker, albeit much more complicated way to rehydrate.

Ringers Lactate is an excellent rehydration liquid. Pedialyte is the next best thing that I've found.

_________________________
The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly is to fill the world with fools.-- Herbert Spencer, English Philosopher (1820-1903)

WARNING & DISCLAIMER:
SELECT AND USE OUTDOORS AND SURVIVAL EQUIPMENT, SUPPLIES AND TECHNIQUES AT YOUR OWN RISK. Information posted
on this forum is not reviewed for accuracy and may not be reliable, use at your own risk. Please
review the full WARNING & DISCLAIMER about information on this
site.